Agnes Cunningham, founder of folk-song journal, dies

June 30, 2004, 10:02 AM EDT

NEW PALTZ, N.Y. -- Agnes Cunningham, who founded the folk-song mimeographed magazine Broadside with her husband, has died. She was 95.

Cunningham died Sunday at a nursing home in New Paltz, 75 miles north of New York City, her daughter Jane Friesen said.

Cunningham and husband Gordon Friesen started printing Broadside in 1962 in their New York City apartment and sold it for 35 cents. For nearly three decades, the magazine published more than 1,000 songs including some of the early works by Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Janis Ian and Tom Paxton.

"This very small magazine, it reached key people throughout the country," Pete Seeger told The New York Times in Wednesday's editions. "When a good song came along, it got picked up right away."

Cunningham, also known as Sis, invited musicians to her Upper West Side apartment where the couple recorded reel after reel of guitar ballads and protest songs. It was in Cunningham's living room that Seeger recorded his nuclear war parody "Mack the Bomb." Dylan's folk anthem "Blowin' in the Wind" was first published in Broadside.

In 2000, songs from the magazine were made into an album titled "The Best of Broadside 1962-1988: Anthems of the American Underground from the Pages of Broadside Magazine." It was nominated for two Grammys in 2001 for best historical album and best liner notes.

Cunningham, an accomplished accordion and guitar player, performed with Woody Guthrie in the 1940s. Born in Watonga, Okla., Cunningham married Friesen in 1941. That year, the couple moved to New York into the communal Almanac House in Greenwich Village with Seeger, Guthrie and others.

Cunningham is survived by two daughters, three grandchildren and a great-grandson.

Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press